We had a glorious hunt today – almost two and a half hours on a beautiful fall day. The hounds were fabulous and the foliage was lovely. A good time was had by all!

Freedom continues to be supercharged, he runs on pure adrenalin once he hears the hounds and today we had got an extra boost from a close encounter with . . . cows! We don’t have cows near us so when he spotted the herd, after the second check, he was on high alert. We had to pass pretty close to them and that was challenging. We had a lot of vertical movement before he figured out that he could gallop by them and still keep up with the field.

I have been leading a hilltopper field the past few hunts and Freedom let me know in no uncertain terms how he felt about it today — he wants to gallop. In some of the large fields, when I was holding him back he started to leap into the air, almost as if there were jumps in front of us. I think that next time, I’m going to have to move him up to the first field so he can really stretch his legs.

Although we are past the peak of the fall foliage, there were still some impressive displays of color and we were blessed by having sunshine and warmth. Maybe a bit too much warmth! I haven’t clipped Freedom yet because he hasn’t grown much of a coat, but seeing how lathered he got today, I will certainly do so before we hunt again.